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Flemish Endive
Choose twelve endives that are short and neat; cut off the outside leaves and pare the bottom; wash them in plenty of water, and cook them in simmering water for three minutes. Then take them from the water and place them in a well-buttered frying-pan, dust them with salt and also with a pinch of sugar. Add the juice of half a lemon, and rather less than a pint of water. Place the pan on the fire for two or three minutes to start the cooking, then cover it closely, and finish the cooking by placing it in the oven for fifty minutes. Take out the endives and put them in the vegetable-dish and pour over them the liquor in which they have been cooked. This liquor is improved by being reduced, and when off the fire, by having a small piece of butter added to it. The above recipe can be used for chicory as well as for endive.
A straightforward braise of Belgian endive (witloof), written for a coal range and needing only a few translations for a modern kitchen.
- The vegetableThe book treats "endive" and "chicory" as two things, since it adds that the same method suits chicory; in British usage of the period the pale, torpedo-shaped chicon (Belgian endive, witloof) was usually the one called chicory, so which is meant here is not certain. Twelve small heads is on the order of 2 lb.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is specified, as was normal when ovens had no dial. A moderate oven, about 350F, suits a fifty-minute braise; the liquid should barely bubble.
- Pare the bottom, and hollow itPare the bottom -- the recipe asks only that the base be pared. Bitterness is generally held to sit in the dense core at the root end, so if the heads are at all large you may cut a shallow cone out of it before blanching.
- The blanchingThree minutes in simmering water draws off some bitterness before the braise. It is not a cooking step, and going longer leaves the heads waterlogged.
- A pint of waterThe book is British, so this is an imperial pint, 20 fl oz. In a wide pan the endives should sit in liquid roughly halfway up, not be submerged; use less if your pan is small.
- Pan choiceA "frying-pan" that goes from burner to oven means a heavy skillet or sauté pan with an ovenproof handle, covered tightly with a lid or foil. A shallow baking dish works equally well.
- Lemon and sugarThese read as correctives more than flavourings: the acid helps keep the heads pale, the pinch of sugar offsets the residual bitterness. Neither need be prominent in the finished dish.
- The finishing sauceBraising liquor will be thin and weak. Pour it into a small pan, boil it down to a few spoonfuls, then take it off the heat and swirl in cold butter so it emulsifies rather than splits.
Witloof chicory is the one vegetable Belgium can claim outright. The story generally told traces it to the 1830s, when chicory roots stored in the dark in a Brussels-area cellar threw up pale, tender shoots; the head gardener of the Brussels Botanical Garden is traditionally credited with developing the forcing method that turned the accident into a crop. By the end of the nineteenth century the chicons were being grown in sand under cover across Flanders and Brabant, and they are often said to have been exported to Paris and London as endive belge. The book is generally described as having been compiled in Britain during the First World War from recipes gathered among Belgian refugees, though the provenance is uncertain, and its plain braises of everyday vegetables — endive, leeks, red cabbage — are as much a record of a displaced domestic cooking as they are instructions.